31 January 2014

It's long been known that carnivorous plants lure their insect prey
in a range of ways: irresistible nectars, vivid colors and alluring
scents that range from rose to rotten flesh. But recently, a group of scientists at the Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute
in India discovered a previously hidden means of beckoning among the
most ruthless of greenery. Some carnivorous plants, they discovered,
lure insects to their death with a fluorescent glow invisible to the
human eye...

"To our great surprise, we found a blue ring on on the pitcher rim," Baby says. "Then, we looked at other Nepenthes species and the prey traps of other carnivorous plants, including the Venus flytrap,
and we consistently found UV-induced blue emissions." These colors,
found in a total of twenty carnivorous plant species and documented in a study published in Plant Biology, were the first time such distinct fluorescent emissions were ever detected in the plant kingdom...

An ant—which can't see red, but is extremely sensitive to blue and
violet light—would see rings of blue florescence, the result of
metabolic compounds in the plant that absorb UV radiation from the Sun and re-emit it as visible light...

...the plants might use their fluorescence for other purposes as well.
Recent field studies in Borneo indicated that some species of pitchers
may have a symbiotic relationship with small nocturnal mammals, such as
rats, bats and tree shrews—these mammals come and drink nectar from the
plants, and deposit nutritious feces nearby, which serve as a fertilizer.

More photos and explanation at Smithsonian. You learn something every day.

In order to keep the price at a rock bottom level, these Chevys
were designed to fit on railcars that could carry twice as many Vegas
than usual, for a total of 30. In order to fit all 30 cars, each rail
car had 30 doors, 15 on each side, that folded down so that a Vega could
be secured inside in a vertical, nose-down fashion. Then a forklift
would come along and lift the door (and car) into place.

Every morning I wake up to be greeted by an emailbox showing new comments to TYWKIWDBI for me to review and weed. And every morning I have to delete utter crap like the above, some of which has made its way through filters and has to be manually expunged.

I don't want to ban comments, which thanks to the readership here often contains more insights and information than the posts themselves, and I don't want to make the signup too onerous. I have wondered if there is a mechanism to stop comments on posts older than XX days (?30, ?60 should allow access by all regular readers), but then some of the classic posts like Squirrel eating a bird or How to break your arm on purpose, which continue to garner relevant comments years after they were posted, would be inaccessible. But that may be the tradeoff to make my mornings more pleasant.

Is there such a time-based filter available via Blogspot? I can't seem to find one. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

In 1740, British vicar William Stukeley published Stonehenge, A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids.

In more than 30 illustrations, Stukeley’s book documents the way Stonehenge appeared when he visited it in the early 18th century. The historian was only the second scholarly investigator (after the 17th-century
antiquarian John Aubrey) to take an interest in the site, and the first
to publish a comprehensive account of what he found on his visits,
including images of the way that the monument looked in context of the
surrounding farmland.

In maps and vistas, Stukeley tried to capture the layout of the
monument’s stones. Much of his sense of urgency in the task came from
his belief that the stones’ arrangement needed preservation, as the
monument was under constant threat of vandalism and interference. For
example, Aubrey found and documented 20 stones in one area of the monument; a century later, Stukeley found only five remaining.

The
dumping permit clears the way for a major expansion of the port of
Abbot Point for two Indian firms and Australian billionaire miner Gina
Rinehart, who together have $16 billion worth of coal projects in the
untapped, inland Galilee Basin.

Environmentalists,
scientists and tourist operators had fought the plan, which they fear
will harm delicate corals and seagrasses and potentially double the ship
traffic through the World Heritage marine park.

The
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, an independent government
agency charged with protecting the reef, acknowledged the concerns, but
said expanding Abbot Point would require much less dredging than other
port options.

"It's
important to note the seafloor of the approved disposal area consists
of sand, silt and clay and does not contain coral reefs or seagrass
beds," the marine park authority's chairman, Russell Reichert, said in a
statement..."

Fortunately, the dredged material will all stay in one place after it's dumped, and won't move around or anything like that, because there aren't any, you know, currents or waves or such.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is likely to be spared from having 3 million cubic metres of dredge spoil dumped on it as part of the Abbot Point coal terminal expansion.

Dawson MP George Christensen confessed in an open letter to Whitsunday residents that “I got it wrong” and is in negotiations with North Queensland Bulk Ports (NQBP) to find a land-based dumping site for the spoil.

"There was an article that came out in an online outlet called BuzzFeed
where they interviewed officials from the Pentagon, from the National
Security Agency and they gave them anonymity to be able to say what they
want and what they told the reporter was that they wanted to murder me.
These individuals - and these are acting government officials. They
said they would be happy, they would love to put a bullet in my head, to
poison me as I was returning from the grocery store and have me die in
the shower...

The National Security agency operates under the President’s executive
authority alone. He can end of modify or direct a change of their
policies at any time...

When you are on the inside and you go into work everyday and you sit
down at the desk and you realise the power you have - you can wire tap
the President of the United States, you can wire tap a Federal Judge and
if you do it carefully no one will ever know because the only way the
NSA discovers abuses are from self reporting...

The Five Eyes alliance is sort of an artifact of the post World War
II era where the Anglophone countries are the major powers banded
together to sort of co-operate and share the costs of intelligence
gathering infrastructure. So we have the UK’s GCHQ, we have the US NSA, we have Canada’s C-Sec,
we have the Australian Signals Intelligence Directorate and we have New
Zealand’s DSD...

You could read anyone’s email in the world. Anybody you’ve got email
address for, any website you can watch traffic to and from it, any
computer that an individual sits at you can watch it, any laptop that
you’re tracking you can follow it as it moves from place to place
throughout the world...

I don’t want to pre-empt the editorial decisions of journalists but
what I will say is there’s no question that the US is engaged in
economic spying.
If there’s information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial
to the national interests, not the national security of the United
States, they’ll go after that information and they’ll take it...

(re outsourcing work to private companies) The problem there is you end up in a situation where government policies
are being influenced by private corporations who have interests that
are completely divorced from the public good in mind. The result of that
is what we saw at Booze Allen Hamilton where you have private
individuals who have access to what the government alleges were millions
and millions of records that they could walk out the door with at any
time with no accountability, no oversight, no auditing, the government
didn’t even know they were gone...

I worked alone. I didn’t need anybody’s help, I don’t have any ties to
foreign governments, I’m not a spy for Russia or China or any other
country for that matter. If I am a traitor who did I betray? I gave all
of my information to the American public, to American journalists who
are reporting on American issues. If they see that as treason I think
people really need to consider who do they think they’re working for.
The public is supposed to be their boss not their enemy... "

Not an electric telephone obviously, but a true "phone" designed to transmit sounds over distances, created in South America before the era of European contact. Smithsonian has the story:

The marvel of acoustic engineering—cunningly constructed of two
resin-coated gourd receivers, each three-and-one-half inches long;
stretched-hide membranes stitched around the bases of the receivers; and
cotton-twine cord extending 75 feet when pulled taut—arose out of the
Chimu empire at its height. The dazzlingly innovative culture was
centered in the Río Moche Valley in northern Peru, wedged between the
Pacific Ocean and the western Andes. “The Chimu were a skillful,
inventive people,” Matos tells me as we don sterile gloves and peer into
the hollowed interiors of the gourds. The Chimu, Matos explains, were
the first true engineering society in the New World, known as much for
their artisanry and metalwork as for the hydraulic canal-irrigation
system they introduced, transforming desert into agricultural lands...

More at the link. I've been unable to locate a better photograph than the embed, but it's clear that this was the equivalent of a modern tin-can telephone.

And I can't resist contrasting her bookshelves with this stack on a wall (original credit unknown) posted at Book Porn:

Addendum: My series of posts on "reader's bookcases," has now accumulated 40+ entries, but I need to move on to other things, so I'm going to call a temporary halt to what has been an interesting venture.

I can't end, however, without reposting (from two years ago) these two remarkable walls of books.

"I like books and I have always dreamt of having a library. My husband fixed ours up in an attic.
Obviously, our books are arranged by topic : detective novels, novels, textbooks, children's books, DIY, etc..."

The big problem... is that the expression has appeared in many forms down the years, such as four different ways from Sunday, eight ways from Tuesday, forty ways till Sunday, and a thousand ways for Sunday.

The key to its origin lies in this early slang collection, which was pointed out to me by Douglas Wilson:

SQUINT-A-PIPES. A squinting man or woman; said to
be born in the middle of the week, and looking both ways for Sunday; or
born in a hackney coach, and looking out of both windows; fit for a
cook, one eye in the pot, and the other up the chimney; looking nine
ways at once.

----Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Captain Francis Grose, 1785.

This is an early American version:

The brow projected exuberantly, though not heavily,
over a pair of rascally little cross-firing twinkling eyes, that, as
the country people said, looked at least nine ways from Sunday.

----Cobus Yerks, a short story by James Kirke Paulding, in The Atlantic Souvenir for Christmas 1828.

It would seem that Paulding employed an amalgamation of the first and
last of Grose’s expressions to describe what is properly called a
strabismus, in which the eyes appear to be looking in different
directions...

As well as the multitudinous versions, the sense has shifted yet again,
to mean completely, thoroughly or by every imaginable method, as in this
example from 1894: “if you want to collect any bills from them you will
have to chase them seven ways from Sunday”. Another, from 2013, also
has that sense: “They both insist that their staff are the best in the
business, and have been checked five ways to Sunday before they get
hired.”

Although the trucks' armored bodies are credited with protecting U.S.
troops from roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, military planners
want more-versatile vehicles that can be deployed quickly as troop
levels decrease. A full-size MRAP (pronounced EM-rap, of course) weighs
about 40,000 pounds, stands 10 feet tall and costs the Pentagon about
$500,000 new...

Interest from foreign militaries has been tepid. But they are a hit
with stateside police agencies. Almost 200 trucks have been distributed
to police departments since August and requests are pending for an
additional 750 trucks. The vehicles, many of which feature machine-gun
turrets, are off-limits to private citizens and businesses.

Lucky
recipients run from the Ohio State University campus police force to
Florence County, S.C., which replaced an armored vehicle from the 1970s
that the sheriff department's SWAT team had used for about 15 years. A
new armored truck would have cost at least $188,000...

"Nobody will want them," says Dean Lockwood, an analyst with Forecast International Inc. "The Afghan terrain is hell on vehicles. It's eating them alive."

For
police, though, the bulky trucks project a show of force at hostage
incidents, civil disturbances and other situations where SWAT officers
with military-grade weapons, uniforms and helmets are deployed.

Thirteen thousand surplus vehicles that cost a half-million dollars each.
Going to American urban and campus police forces.
To be replaced by even more vehicles.

The axolotl... also known as a Mexican salamander (Ambystoma mexicanum) or a Mexican walking fish, is a neotenic salamander, closely related to the tiger salamander. Although the axolotl is colloquially known as a "walking fish", it is not a fish, but an amphibian. The species originates from numerous lakes, such as Lake Xochimilco underlying Mexico City. Axolotls are unusual among amphibians in that they reach adulthood without undergoing metamorphosis. Instead of developing lungs and taking to land, the adults remain aquatic and gilled.

Mexico's salamander-like axolotl may have disappeared from its only known natural habitat in Mexico City's few remaining lakes....

The axolotl is known as the "water monster" and the "Mexican walking fish." Its only natural habitat is the Xochimilco network of lakes and canals, which are suffering from pollution and urban sprawl.
Biologist Armando Tovar Garza, of Mexico's National Autonomous University, described an attempt last year by researchers to try to net axolotls in the shallow, muddy waters of Xochimilco as "four months of sampling zero axolotls"...

The Mexican Academy of Sciences said a 1998 survey had found an average of 6,000 axolotls for each square km, a figure that dropped to 1,000 in a 2003 study, and 100 in a 2008 survey.

Our children's children will grow up in a vastly depleted and markedly less interesting world. (Unless they are interested in cockroaches and jellyfish).

Update (March 2014): I should have used "au revoir" rather than "goodbye" in the title, because some survivors in the wild have been located -

By all accounts, the papal conclave that elevated Bergoglio assumed
it was electing a fairly anodyne compromise candidate. Cardinals liked
the idea of a pope from Latin America, one of the Church's leading
growth markets. They also responded well to a stirring three-minute
speech Bergoglio gave during the conclave, in which he said the Church,
in order to survive, must stop "living within herself, of herself, for
herself."

But he gave no other indication that he'd be any kind of change
agent. In the days after his election, most newspapers described him as a
safe, conservative choice...

The pope's tonal changes don't necessarily signal a wild swing from
tradition. Francis has ruled out the ordination of women, for example,
and he still considers abortion an evil. But those obsessed with
contextualizing Francis would do well to take a look at the impromptu
press conference he granted last summer to gathered Vaticanisti (members
of the Vatican press corps) during the flight back from a trip to Rio.
Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, told me
he'd expected the press conference would go about 20 minutes. It lasted
for nearly 90, and ended up including the pope's famous "Who am I to
judge?" response, which is normally the only part of the exchange that's
quoted. But reading the full transcript or, better yet, watching longer
excerpts on YouTube helps to convey the true context.

A reporter asks Francis, who is standing at the head of the aisle,
about the existence of a "gay lobby" within the Vatican. Francis begins
by making a joke, saying he hasn't yet run into anyone with a special
gay identification card. But then his face becomes serious and,
gesturing for emphasis, he says it's important to distinguish between
lobbies, which are bad – "A lobby of the greedy, a lobby of politicians,
a lobby of Masons, so many lobbies!" he says later in the press
conference – and individual gay people who are well-intentioned and
seeking God. It's while speaking to the latter point that he makes the
"Who am I to judge?" remark, and this part of the video is really worth
watching, because, aside from the entirely mind-blowing fact of a
supposedly infallible pope asking this question at all, his answer is
never really translated properly. What he actually says is, "Mah, who am I to judge?" In Italian, mah is an interjection with no exact English parallel, sort of the verbal equivalent of an emphatic shrug. My dad's use of mah
most often precedes his resignedly pouring another splash of grappa
into his coffee. The closest translation I can come up with is "Look,
who the hell knows?" If you watch the video, Francis even pinches his
fingers together for extra Italian emphasis. Then he flashes a knowing
smirk...

Even simple gestures, like Francis' rejection of the papal palace, went
beyond mere symbolism. "The main reason he didn't want to live there
mostly had to do with autonomy," says a Vatican clergyman who has worked
closely with multiple popes. "In the palace, they can control what gets
to you."..

Much more at the link, which discusses not just this Pope but the status of modern Catholicism. If you're going to waste time at work today on the internet, try this article rather than TYWKIWDBI entries on the movement of flies on windowpanes.

*There have been many other people featured on the cover
who have not been rock musicians or entertainers (in the conventional
sense): Jar-Jar Binks, George W. Bush, Princess Caroline of Monaco,
E.T., Hubert Humphrey...

27 January 2014

"This dog just appeared out of nowhere and followed us for an entire week during our trekking trip in the Himalayan outback . . . When I decided to get up at 4 a.m. to climb the next 5000 m peak for sunrise he accompanied me as well. On the top he was sitting for the entire 30 minutes on this place."

Posted at Reddit EarthPorn, where the interesting comment thread includes the following:

"Your spiritual journey of a lifetime. His average Tuesday."
"These people just appeared out of nowhere and followed me for an entire week."
"Maybe it wasnt a dog, but a spirit guide."
"We met the same dog trekking over the Korzok Range near Tso Moriri! The
first night he slept under my tent's fly, then in my friend's vestibule.
For a couple of days we didn't feed him, trying to encourage him to go
'home' - that was very hard because he was such a lovely dog. After we
crossed a 5900+m pass we had no choice, and fed him well. He was a
wonderful companion, but eventually abandoned us for a group of mountain
bikers, who presumably had better food! I only have one picture of him,
but it was taken at the top of a pass, the only time he was cold and
sad."

A 42-year-old male electrician presented to the eye clinic with
decreasing vision 4 weeks after an electrical burn of 14,000 V to the
left shoulder. His vision in both eyes was limited to perception of hand
motions...
Slit-lamp examination showed bilateral stellate anterior subcapsular
opacities of the lens... Four months after the injury, the patient underwent cataract extraction
and implantation of an intraocular lens, which was followed by
improvement in visual acuity to 20/70 in the right eye and 20/400 in the
left eye...

This is very interesting. I wonder how an electrical injury to his shoulder translated into an ocular injury, and why the damage to the lens evolved into that pattern.

"Your pregnancy with this child is a once in a lifetime experience. Recall those feelings with your own 3D Baby.

At 3D Babies, we create an adorable
baby figurine resembling your baby's facial features and body position.
We use your 3D/4D ultrasound images or newborn baby pictures to create a
unique artistic representation of your baby using the latest computer
graphics and 3D printing technology. For best results, you can schedule your 3D ultrasound during gestation weeks 24-32. This
is a great way to share the excitement of your new baby with family and
friends. Your 3D Baby will be a treasured family remembrance of your
pregnancy and new baby."

I haven't decided whether this is a reality or just a concept, because the blog at the company's website discusses crowdfunding. I'm not going to offer any commentary - res ipsa loquitur and all that.Via FastCompany.

The custom's origins are obscure, but revelers have been slinging dead
rats at each other on San Pedro's day for about as long as anyone can
remember...

El Puig is set in the heart of Valencian orange country, and many rats
come from fields around town, said Julio Hurtado, a festival organizer.
Some rat-chuckers go to the trouble of freezing rodents beforehand, so
they won't get caught short on the great day, locals say...

Mr. Montesinos is critical of those who want to stop rat-tossing. "We can't lose the very thing that makes us unique," he said...

Nobody's sure what will happen this Sunday, but some animal-rights
supporters have just about given up on changing El Puig. "The only
reason anyone ever pays attention to El Puig is because of the rats,"
said Silvia Barquero, a leader of Spain's animal-rights party, Pacma.
"Really, I think they're very proud of their rats."

Two poles stand vertically on level ground. One is 10 feet tall, the
other 15 feet tall. If a line is drawn from the top of each pole to the
bottom of the other, the two lines intersect at a point 6 feet above the
ground. What’s the distance between the poles?

You can take a wild guess (and be correct), or view the answer at Futility Closet.

Addendum: If you're like me and need a bit of help in understanding the answer, see the comment by the fourth Anonymous (8:28 PM), which refers to this annotated version of the same diagram:

In other words, in the European-facing half of Ukraine, the orange
half, the protests are even more widespread and severe than you might
have gathered from watching the media coverage. But it's important to
keep in mind that the other half of the country, the blue half, is much
quieter.

You may be wondering, then, why there is such a consistent and deep
divide between these two halves of Ukraine. Here's the really crucial
thing to understand about Ukraine: A whole lot of the country speaks
Russian, rather than Ukrainian. This map shows the country's linguistic
divide, which you may notice lines up just about perfectly with its
political divide.

Ukrainian is the majority and official language of Ukraine. But, as a
legacy of of the country's subjugation by Russia, many Ukrainians speak
Russian, which is the native language for about one-third of the
population. The Russian speakers are clustered in the south and east. A
significant chunk of them are ethnic Russian, as well. In some regions,
more than three-quarters of the population speaks Russian as their
primary language.

Heavily Russian-speaking regions can tend to be more sympathetic (or
at least less hostile) to policies that bring their country closer to
Russia, as Yanukovych has been doing. But the Ukrainian-speaking regions
have historically sought a Ukrainian national identity that is less
Russia-facing and more European. So this is about politics, yes, but
it's also about identity, about the question of what it means to be
Ukrainian.

More at The Washington Post (and there are some perceptive observations by readers in the Comments below).

24 January 2014

I've hunted the North Shore and have seen lots of agates, most of which have a more muted red that tends more toward maroon, making me wonder whether this is aberrant or altered. But it is an impressive photo, from Wikipedia.

[I]f you’re not a fan of the clerical regime, you might want to consider
killing it with kindness instead of bolstering it with belligerence.
More than half of Iran’s population is under 35, and many are eager for
better relations with the outside world (including the United States).
Making it easier for Iranians to travel, get educated in the United
States, and get exposed to the rest of the outside world will put those
aging mullahs in a very awkward position. Have we learnt nothingfrom the failed Cuban embargo, which has helped keep the Castro Bros. in power for half a century?If
we really believe in the transformative power of markets, Hollywood,
hip-hop, the Internet, democracy, and free speech, let’s turn ‘em loose
on Tehran. If your goal is a more moderate Iran, that approach is likely
to work a lot better than ostracism, covert action, and repeated
threats of military force, which merely galvanize Iranian nationalism
and help justify continued repression by hardliners.

Inside the game, it is understood that both starting quarterbacks [for the Superbowl]
possess a trait that renders them all but weatherproof. The Seattle
Seahawks' Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos' Peyton Manning have
huge hands...

But today's executives understand that height isn't the only or even the
most important measure of a quarterback's size. Wilson stands only 5
feet 11. But from pinkie to thumb, his hands measure 10¼ inches...

In an informal poll of league executives this week, nearly all said the league was moving away from small-handed quarterbacks, in part because of the cold-weather advantage of large hands. Former NFL executive Gil Brandt said that throughout history, the list of small-handed NFL quarterback stars is short—and may consist only of Hall of Famer Norm Van Brocklin. "He had short little stubbs [sic] for fingers," said Brandt.

In a shocker, star Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson, once considered a top draft prospect, fell to the fourth round of last year's draft. The team that drafted him, the Oakland Raiders, released him before he ever played in a game — which seldom happens for a pick that high. Scouts have confirmed that his incredibly small hands, 8¾ inches, were a huge factor...

My hand span is about 9 inches, which is one reason why, when I retired from academia, I decided to become a blogger rather than a professional quarterback.

Histogram from StatCrunch (data source not given and validity not assured).

The knocker-up used a truncheon or short, heavy stick to knock on the clients' doors or a long and light stick, often made of bamboo, to reach windows on higher floors. At least one of them used a pea-shooter. In return, the knocker-up would be paid a few pence a week. The knocker-up would not leave a client's window until they were sure that the client had been awoken.

A knocker upper would also use a 'snuffer outer' as a tool to rouse the sleeping. This implement was used to put out gas lamps which were lit at dusk and then needed to be extinguished at dawn.

When BBC reporter Steve Rosenberg went to use the bathroom at the
cross-country skiing and biathlon center for next month's Winter
Olympics in Sochi, he found two toilets but only one stall...

Although toilets like that are not common in Russia, social media
users posted photos of other side-by-side toilets, including ones in a
courthouse and a cafe. The editor of the state R-Sport news agency said such communal toilets are standard at Russian soccer stadiums...

In a nod to the tight security measures imposed in Sochi for the Winter
Olympics, another joke has it that the second toilet was for a Russian
security officer.

I browse a variety of foreign blogs, and am always relieved to find a "translate" button or British flag to save me the need to copy and paste into Google translate. This week I suddenly realized I didn't have one on this blog, even though I've had readers from 175 countries just in the last month.

So now there is one, in the right sidebar near the top. The blog seems to load just a bit slower since I've added the widget; I hope this won't be a problem. The pull-down menu leads to 80 languages. I thought it was interesting to see how it looked in Finnish and Tamil and Urdu.

22 January 2014

It's been 20 or 30 years since I've paid full price to mail a letter (or a package). The current rate for a one-ounce first-class letter is $0.46, but I've been mailing mine for years for about $0.35. The photo above shows the corner of a heavy manila envelope I mailed last week. Affixed to it is $2.32 in stamps - which cost me about $1.75. This post will explain how you can do the same.

I'm writing this now because on January 26, the postal rate for one-ounce letters in the U.S. will rise from 46c to 49c, and cyberspace seems to be full of friendly financial advice on why everyone should purchase "forever stamps" now to save 3c per letter. Fiddle-faddle. That's child's play, written by people who are unaware that postage stamps can be purchased at a substantial discount.

Before I get to "discount postage," we need to review two ways NOT to try to save money on postage, so that you don't end up in a Federal court or prison.

Intentionally short-paid postage is illegal.In the first hundred years of the postal services, the appropriateness of postage applied to a letter or package was checked by a postal employee, either at a service desk, or in a sorting facility, or by a carrier. This changed in the 1960s when technology was developed for applying to stamps a "tag" which automated equipment could read. Those interested in the details can learn more about the process in a Linn's refresher course.

This was done to facilitate automated sorting of mail, but it also opened the door for a postal scam. Early sorting equipment could not distinguish between a 6c stamp and a higher denomination stamp if both of them were tagged, so when postal rates rose, some unscrupulous people began sending out mass mailings franked with the 6c tagged stamps, advising recipients that they didn't have to pay 10c or 13c or whatever to mail a letter, and they could send $$ to find out the "secret." As the U.S. Postal Inspection Service notes, this is a federal crime.

You should never intentionally underfrank a mailing. Nobody will arrest you if you inadvertently use a 46c at the end of this January, but to do so on a consistent basis is a form of postal fraud.

Reusing previously-used stamps is illegal.
Ever since the first Penny Black stamp was issued in Great Britain, postal authorities have wrestled with the problem of how to prevent the public from reusing stamps. The conventional approach has been to apply a cancellation, but sometimes the ink on a cancel can be removed from the stamp.

Large-scale scams involving reused stamps were developed some decades ago, reportedly by persons incarcerated in prisons. They would advertise in newspapers and magazines asking the public to send them used postage stamps for their collections, then wash the cancels off the stamps, regum them, and resell them again. An article at the Christian Science Monitor offers some background.

Certain types of stamps issued by the Postal Service can be washed
clean of their cancellation marks with common chemical products. The
stamps are then able to be reused.

``There have been entire
business enterprises built around this [laundering] operation,'' says
Joe Brockert, program manager for the stamps division of the USPS. ``In
one prosecution, three tractor-trailer loads of stamped envelopes, yet
to be chemically altered and stamps removed, were confiscated by postal
inspectors.''

Most people would not consider soaking a stamp off a letter for reuse, but if that stamp is a $19.95 Grand Central Terminal stamp for use on Express Mail, the temptation becomes greater. Let's be clear about this: removing a cancel from a stamp and reusing that stamp on another letter or package is a federal crime.

But - there are grey areas. The first involves water-damaged stamps, typically those resulting from floods in urban areas. In such circumstances entire sheets of stamps may become stuck together; they can be soaked apart, but then will have inadequate gum. Since those stamps have never been used for postage, to my understanding it is permissible to reapply gum and use them.

Which brings us to "skips." Everyone who receives mail knows that sometimes envelopes come through the postal service equipment uncancelled (or the cancel misses the stamp). Many people harvest such "skips" by cutting the corner off the envelope, soaking the stamp free, and applying gum with a gum stick. This is illegal - although frankly it is unlikely that one would be caught. You can even find such stamps offered in bulk lots on eBay as "no gum postage." While it is possible that some "no gum" stamps being offered resulted from a broken water pipe in the seller's basement, I wouldn't count on it. You shouldn't buy such material.

Why discount postage exists
The compelling reason why you shouldn't soak stamps off for reuse or buy dodgy items from a shady person is that the alternative - discount postage - is readily available and relatively inexpensive.

Discount postage exists primarily because of stamp collectors. When I was growing up in the 1960s, the popularity of the hobby was rising; advertisements for collectible stamps were in every issue of Boy's Life and in comic books. Increased participation in the hobby generated drove prices higher, so many collectors began to put away sheets and blocks of mint stamps as "investments."

However, as the decades went by, the interests of young people shifted toward pastimes that required electrical outlets. The demographic profile of the average collector got older, so that now many of the stamps saved as investments are coming back on to the market, and are for sale at prices below their "face" value.

There are other reasons for the availability of discount postage, such as scrap left over by current-day collectors of plate blocks and plate number coils, or mistakenly large purchases for business use (and see the addendum at the bottom of this post), but to make a long story short, postage stamps can easily be purchased today at discounted prices. This is perfectly legal. The stamps were originally purchased from the postal authorities as advanced payment for future service; a stamp issued in 1953 is just as valid for postage now as it was then. (In some countries, out-of-date stamps have been "demonitized," and rendered worthless for postage; this has not happened in the U.S. except briefly during the Civil War.)Where to purchase discount postage stamps
I'll offer three suggestions for sources of discount postage: members of local stamp clubs, eBay, and stamp stores/online retailers.

Local stamp clubs: Most medium- and large-sized cities in the U.S. have clubs of stamp collectors who have meetings where they buy/sell/trade material and hear lectures or presentations. These meetings are open to the public (most would eagerly welcome visitors), and I would bet that every club has one or more members who are selling postage stamps at a discount.

To locate a stamp club in your area, you can check your local newspaper, inquire at city hall, or ask for help from a community reference librarian. But the best way is to go to the relevant webpage of the American Philatelic Society and enter your location in the search field. At this link you can also search for clubs of stamp collectors in countries other than the U.S.

eBay: You can use the general search function (use "face" or "discount" as a search term), or go directly to the category Stamps> United States> Postage, where most of it is listed. Prices will vary according to the type of material. Low-denomination stamps (3c, 5c etc) are ridiculously cheap, but it's hard to fit enough of them on envelopes, and they have to be combined with higher denomination stamps (8c or greater) so that a fluorescent "tag" will be recognized by sorting equipment. As you get closer to the current first-class rate, the percentage of face will rise. Larger purchases will mean lower % of face.

Here are some examples from the "sold" listings:

$42 face for $29 + $2 ship = 74%.

This one was offered at an opening bid of 65%, and sold at 69%; it's larger in size than the one above and has lower-denomination stamps.

Be careful when you encounter the term "unused," which may refer to the ungummed stamps I mentioned earlier (same re "uncancelled" stamps, or anything "on paper.") I would not recommend you purchase material advertised as "no gum."

And if you don't relish the thought of licking 6 stamps on each envelope, consider purchasing already-stamped envelopes at a discount. Many people don't realize that U.S. post offices sell stamped envelopes ("postal stationery") in different sizes, with and without windows. At the post office they sell at face, but like stamps, old ones with out-of-date denominations can be purchsed at a discount. These sold on eBay for 66% of face value -

- and these for only 60% -

- but note the second lot is much larger, and it includes a lot of "window" envelopes, which may not be easily used for noncommercial mailings.

I recently got some at about half of face value:

The addition of a 20c stamp (also acquired at a discount) rendered them ready to mail:

Merchants: The third option for purchasing discount postage, considered by many to be more reliable than eBay, is to deal with a merchant - a stamp dealer - either at a local store, or online. As the hobby demographics have changed, the number of brick-and-mortar stamp stores have declined precipitously. When I was growing up, stamp stores were in local neighborhoods, and department stores like Dayton's and Donaldson's had departments selling stamps; nowadays, even medium-sized cities may show no stamp stores in the Yellow Pages.

Most successful stamp dealers have an online presence; a simple Google search for "discount postage" will offer a wealth of choices. The screencap at right comes from such a vendor (but his minimum purchase is $1,000 of face value stamps, and thus a $800 - $880 purchase).

You can find better deals than that with a little searching, but you'll want to be sure to exercise the cautions I mentioned above - to avoid previously used stamps, stamps "on paper," "unused" stamps (skips), and regummed stamps.

I'll take the liberty of recommending one dealer. Jay Smith and Associates is a specialist in Scandinavian stamps whom I have dealt with intermittently for perhaps ten years. They recently began offering discount postage in prepackaged groupings:

Postage Rate Units are groupings of stamps needed to meet a
particular postage rate (for example, starting 26 January 2014, the U.S.
postage rate is 49 cents for the first ounce for a normal letter). A
"postage rate unit" to meet the 49 cent amount will consist of up to
(NOT more than) 3 stamps that total 49 cents: For example 25 + 20 + 4 =
49. Such units may be made up of various denominations, but will not
require more than three stamps. The stamps will be neatly sorted and
packaged (typically in groups of 25, usually mostly the same stamps) for
easy use and will be clearly labeled so you know how they are intended
to be combined and used.

The percentage of face (70-80%) will vary inversely with the size of your order.

Some final thoughts.
If you decide to use discount postage, be kind to your postman or postal clerk. They don't enjoy adding up a half-dozen numbers to check postage. As shown in the top photo for this post, I leave a notation next to the stamps of the total value (and in this case the weight).

Be sure to use one or more stamps with a denomination of 8c or higher to trigger the automated equipment. Finally, the non-denominated "temporary" stamps labeled "A," "B," etc, issued at the time of postal rate changes, are not to
be used for foreign mailings because they are undenominated).

TLDR:
In the United States (and presumably in many other countries), mint postage stamps can be purchased at prices substantially below their "face" value and can save you about 25% of your mailing cost.

Addendum: I've been reminded by a well-informed reader that there are a couple of additional factors that can come into play, especially when large quantities of recently-issued high-denomination stamps are involved:

There are a very
limited number of reasons that such very recent stamps would be
available in large quantities -- and for most of those reasons, you
might not want to be involved:

1) Stamps stolen from post offices.

2)
Stamps stolen from companies, by employees from employers.

3) Stamps
purchased properly from a post office, usually by the owner of a small
company, using the company's funds and writing it off on income taxes as
a "business expense" and then the owner (or employee) takes the stamps
home and sells them privately -- this is either theft from a company
and/or its stockholders and/or a theft from the IRS and the taxpaying public.

So, if you see large
quantities of very recent stamps being sold on a venue like eBay and/or
if the seller is not a regular seller of other types of stamps for
collectors, I would be very wary. Sure, you probably won't be "caught"
if you buy stamps "taken from the back of a truck", but you could become
part of something you don't want to be involved in.

"Though more "assorted stacks" than organized library, the bookshelf closet in my childhood-bedroom-come-study came to mind. Predominately reference books and assorted curiosities it is but one of the many book nooks located around our house."

"Barely visible in the upper left is my favourite in the stash and the only on this shelf that are not reference. Three miniature books of prayer rest under a kitsch figurine of a monkey who sits thoughtfully on a ceramic book with DARWIN inscribed on the spine. The occupied japanese take on Affe mit Schadel by Hugo Rheinhold perhaps?"

Grace's submission is the 39th entry in the reader's bookcases category of TYWKIWDBI - and the last, because the queue is now depleted. I just want to remind everyone that someday you will die and your books and knickknacks will be dispersed to libraries and charities and relatives who didn't really know you very well, and all that information about how they were assembled will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

"I've got a nice comfy library with 7 built-in bookcases made of maple, a lot of art, and a secret door in a photo niche that leads into a theater.
Most of the shelves have modern books. There's a science fiction section, medical/biology, text books, etc. The one above has a lot of 19th century science and engineering books. That's kind of my thing. Another case has other 19th century things like history and literature sets."

21 January 2014

So you think you understand where maple syrup comes from in trees? Think again...

In October 2013, Drs. Tim Perkins and Abby van Den Berg of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center,
revealed the findings of a study at a maple syrup conference in New
Brunswick, Canada that sent waves through the industry. In 2010, they
were studying vacuum systems in sap collection operations. Based on the
observation that one of the mature trees in the study that was missing
most of its top was still yielding high volumes of sap, they
hypothesized that the maples were possibly drawing moisture from the
soil and not the crown. Previously, they had presumed that the sap
dripping from tap holes was coming from the upper portion of the tree.
But, if the tree was missing most of its crown then, they surmised, it
must be drawing moisture from the roots.

In order not to destroy the mature maples in the research forest to
test their theory, they went to the maple saplings planted near the lab
which are often used to gather data. They lopped off the top of the
small trees, put caps on them with a tube inserted, sealed the cap and
put them under vacuum. The young trees produced impressive quantities of
sap, even without the benefit of a crown...

They realized that their discovery meant sugarmakers could use
saplings, densely planted in open fields, to harvest sap. In other
words, it is possible that maple syrup could now be produced as a row
crop like every other commercial crop in North America.

In a natural forest, which varies in maple density, an average 60 to
100 taps per acre will yield 40 to 50 gallons of syrup. According to the
researchers’ calculations, an acre of what is now called “the
plantation method” could sustain 5,800 saplings with taps yielding 400
gallons of syrup per acre. If the method is realized, producing maple
syrup on a commercial scale may no longer be restricted to those with
forest land; it could require just 50 acres of arable land instead of
500 acres of forest. Furthermore, any region with the right climate for
growing maples would be able to start up maple “farms”. The natural
forest would become redundant...

"Personally the thought of taking maple out of the forest and turning
into another row crop saddens me. We have been in the maple business
since 2009 and our sugarhouse has a reputation for utilizing the most
modern technology available to maximize efficiency of production.
Nevertheless, the news of the plantation system has been a lot to chew
on since we learned of it. We are relatively new to the trade but have
come to love it, one of the principal reasons being our interaction with
the thousand acres of forest behind our home. Like Dave Folino, I fear
that the industry will no longer be special to New England but will be
usurped by entrepreneurs anywhere with the right climate. And on a more
visceral level, I feel that maple syrup is and should remain a product
of the wild. Aside from mushrooms and game meat, the woods of Vermont
hardly yield anything edible. And yet, this exquisite sugar can be
extracted from the trees while still leaving them healthy and the forest
a home to everything from rare wildflowers to bob cats. For me, knowing
its origins elicits an amount of pleasure equal to tasting its unique
flavor when I drizzle it over morning pancakes. Finally, I ponderwhat
will happen to the acres of working forests if landowners are no longer
making an income from them through tapping the trees. It would be
unrealistic to expect all of those landowners to choose conservation."

A hat tip to John Farrier, who posted recently at Neatorama the above photos [credit top and lower] of "tesselated pavement" in Tasmania.

Occurring near sea coasts on flat rock which has broken into regular
blocks, the effect is known as "tessellated pavement" for its
resemblance to Roman mosaic floors (also called tessellated pavement).
The pavement takes two forms. Depressions are known as pan formations,
occurring when saltwater wears away the center portion of the stones
into pools. The opposite effect is known as a loaf formation, when the
edges of the stone are worn away leaving a rounded crown resembling
rising bread.

Formations like these provide the natural geological explanation for debunking claims that the Bimini Road is manmade - an underwater residuum of ancient Atlantis.

What is Dihydrogen Monoxide?

Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound,
also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide,
Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid.
Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate
DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical
neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive
and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl
Alcohol...

What are some of the dangers associated with DHMO?

Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide
is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths
and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage
to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen
Monoxide are:

Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.

Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.

Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically
life-threatening side-effects.

20 January 2014

The modern convention seems to be to celebrate Poe on his death day (October 7), but that seems to me to be unnecessarily morbid, so I'm going to use his 205th birthday for a special tribute here at TYWKIWDBI.

I was an English major in college, then moved on to a career in the biological sciences. Those interests dovetailed for me in the 1980s when, as a faculty member at the University of Kentucky, I took an adult education course on Poe given by James Cagey at Lexington Community College. The course material covered a variety of works I had not previously encountered, and I went on to read Poe's complete works.

As I did so, I encountered in Poe's writings an inordinate number of references consistent with the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, a disorder which I had personally experienced on a distressing number of occasions. During the next decade I used my free time to do a lot of library research (but no bench research) on sleep paralysis. Then in 1997 I crafted a manuscript about manifestations of sleep paralysis in Poe's writings, but for a variety of reasons (those in the academic world will understand that there is never enough time to pursue one's personal interests), I never submitted it for publication.

Here it is, in near-final-draft form. There is one citation that needs to be filled in, and the source materials are not presented in sufficient detail for publication (but will be adequate for this cyberversion).

******************************************************

Between Wakefulness and Sleep:

A study of sleep paralysis in the

life and works of Edgar Allan Poe

Introduction

Persons
unfamiliar with the bulk of Edgar Allan Poe's writings tend to think of him
only in association with his most famous tales of horror.Behind those works lie poems, essays,
literary criticism, and a single novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
of Nantucket.There is of
course no single clearly-identifiable theme which runs through that mass of
work, but readers with a medical background are apt to be especially aware of
the inordinately frequent inclusion of descriptions of cataplexy.Cataplexy, defined now as partial or
complete loss of muscle tone during wakefulness, usually occurs in response to
strong emotion, classically laughter or anger; this condition forms a prominent
part of the most notable horror stories, including "The Fall of the House
of Usher", "The Premature Burial", "The Oblong Box",
and "Berenice".Often
associated with cataplexy, but frequently described independently, is the
sensation of breathlessness of suffocation, most vividly portrayed during depictions
of living inhumation.

What
is the source of this preoccupation with paralysis and suffocation?Many commentators have noted that Poe's
father and the three women he loved most - his mother Anna, his foster mother
Mrs. Allan, and his wife- each
died of respiratory failure, accompanied by hemoptysis and likely representing
the terminal stages of tuberculosis or bronchiectasis (Hoffman p 28).Others have suggested that Poe's
own notorious inability to handle liquor entered into his writings; Levin has
stated that if DeQuincy's writing came from drugs, then Poe's came from the
bottle.

It
is also possible - and, medically speaking, more likely - that Poe was
describing the entity now known as sleep paralysis, and that the paralysis and
breathlessness that so fascinated him may reflect his personal experience with
this disorder.

Sleep Disorders in Poe's
Writings

Throughout
his life, Poe expressed a fascination with the borderline state which separates
sleep from wakefulness and the one which separates death from life.The protagonist in his "The Pit
and the Pendulum" describes this state as follows:

"In the return to life from the swoon there are two
stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly that of the
sense of physical, existence."

This character awakens supine in
the blackness of a dungeon, to which he has been committed by the
Inquisition.His first sensations
upon awakening are

" . . . the tumultuous motion of the heart... Then
the mere consciousness of existence, without thought... then, very suddenly,
thought, and shuddering terror... Then a rushing revival of soul and a
successful effort to move."

A
virtually complete description of the phenomenon of sleep paralysis occurs in The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, in which the protagonist,
awakening from sleep in the stifling darkness of a ship hold, imagines a
creature is sitting on his chest:

"I fell, in spite of every exertion to the contrary,
into a state of profound sleep, or rather stupor.My dreams were of the most terrific description... Among
other miseries, I was smothered to death between huge pillows, by demons of the
most ghastly and ferocious aspect.Immense serpents held me in their embrace, and looked earnestly in my
face with their fearfully shining eyes... [and upon awakening]... The
paws of some huge and real monster were pressing heavily upon my bosom - his
hot breath was in my ear - and his white and ghastly fangs were gleaming upon
me through the gloom.Had a
thousand lives hung upon the movement of a limb or the utterance of a syllable,
I could neither have stirred nor spoken." (pp 65-66)

Poe
frequently likened the state of sleep to that of death, and conversely in his
little-known tale, "The Colloquy of Monos and Una," he has a dead
person liken his condition to that of sleep, including a description of the
aforementioned sleep paralysis:

"There came upon me... a breathless and motionless
torpor; and this was termed death by those who stood around me... My
condition did not deprive me of sentience.It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme
quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless
and fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back into
consciousness... Volition had not departed, but was powerless."

In
Poe's time, cataplexy - defined as temporary paralysis while awake - was part
of lay medical knowledge and was an affliction of several of Poe's most notable
characters.The central figure in
"The Premature Burial" describes himself as cataplectic:

"My own case differed in no important particular from
those mentioned in medical books.Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little, into a
condition of semi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain,
without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull
lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my
bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to
perfect sensation... however, my general health appeared to be good...
[except] awakening from slumber, I could never gain, at once, thorough
possession of my senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in much
bewilderment and perplexity... " (p. 150)

Classic cataplexy is inducible by
laughter, as described by Poe in "The Oblong Box":

"He began a loud and boisterous laugh, which, to my
astonishment, he kept up, with gradually increasing vigor, for ten minutes or
more.In conclusion, he fell flat
and heavily upon the deck.When I
ran to uplift him, to all appearances he was dead."(p. 294)

Similarly
the lady Madeline in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is said to
suffer from a "partially cataleptical character" which leads to her
inhumation while alive, as did the central figure of "Some Words with a
Mummy," who was not only buried but embalmed as well while in a cataleptic
state.

The Phenomenon of Sleep
Paralysis

Sleep
paralysis as a defined entity did not enter the medical literature until a
quarter century after Poe's death in 1849.It can generally be defined as a state of consciousness
experienced either while waking or falling asleep, characterized by the
inability to move.Most commonly it
is recognized as part of the tetrad of narcolepsy: sleep attacks, cataplexy,
sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations.

Sleep
paralysis can occur as an isolated phenomenon (Schenck, JAMA), or coupled with
hallucinations in individuals not subject to the sleep attacks of a true
narcoleptic.It appears likely
that the disorder has a physiological basis; muscular hypotonicity is an
integral part of normal sleep, perhaps teleologically representing a protective
mechanism preventing the sleeper's body from reacting dynamically to the
emotional content of dreams.Sleep
paralysis then may be viewed as a transitory dissociation in the integrated
activity of the reticular activating system and the motor system, in which the
subject falling asleep experiences motor paralysis prior to the onset of loss
of consciousness.The same
phenomenon may occur upon awakening if the subject regains consciousness and
awareness of surroundings before regaining the use of voluntary muscles
(Broughton, Can Pscyh).

It
is common for the subject experiencing sleep paralysis to have an accompanying
sense of anxiety or dread, often with a concomitant tachycardia.The final component of the disorder is
a sensation of difficulty in breathing, often described as suffocation and
likened to the sensation of having a great weight placed upon the chest or
stomach.If hallucinations occur,
the subject may visualize a person or creature sitting upon his chest.The experience terminates immediately
if the subject is touched, or may be terminated by the subject when motor
function returns.

Potential Sources for Poe's
Descriptions

Poe
has thus incorporated into his work descriptions of the entities of cataplexy,
sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations.The question naturally arises as to whether he is
transcribing accounts of personal experience or making use of material
previously published on the subject.Certainly there is substantial evidence for the latter choice; even a
cursory glance at an annotated collection of Poe's work reveals his heavy
indebtedness to works both ancient and contemporary.It is also true that Poe was much in tune with the popular
interests and trends of the time, for understandable monetary reasons; if the
public expressed interest in mesmerism or Egyptology, he provided tales on the
subject.Cataplexy was public
knowledge and might well have figured in numerous tales because of its exotic
popular appear.

The
combination of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations has been
recognized in folklore by the term "nightmare."The classic description was written in
1753:

"The Night-mare generally seizes people who sleep on
their backs, and often begins with frightful dreams, which are soon succeeded
by a difficult respiration, a violent oppression on the breast, and a total
privation of voluntary motion.In
this agony they sigh, groan, utter indistinct sounds, and remain in the jaws of
death, till, by the utmost efforts of nature, or some external assistance, they
escape out of their dreadful torpid state." (Bond)

The author then postulates
mechanisms which are strikingly similar to our current knowledge:

". . . power over the Voluntary Muscles is some way
suspended... the Mind generally ascribes the immobility of the Body to some
great weight laid on the Breast; whereas the cause is really internal...
Besides, in heavy or profound sleep, the voluntary motions are generally
stop'd.Hence, when people awake
suddenly, they are for some time Paralytic, before the Animal Spirits obey the
commands of the Mind, and actuate the Muscles in the usual manner." (Bond)

The
distinguishing features of the classic nightmare include 1) the feeling of
agonizing dread, 2) a sense of weight on the chest which seems to interfere
with respiration, and 3) the feeling of helpless paralysis (Liddon, quoting
Jones).Writing in 1916 in "A
Treatise on the Incubus or Nightmare," Waller described a victim who

"... makes violent efforts to move his limbs,
especially his arms, as if throwing off incumbent weight, but they will not
obey the impulse of the will; he groans aloud, if he has the strength to do so,
while every effort he makes seems to exhaust his remaining vigor."

Liddon has pointed out that the
nightmare and sleep paralysis correspond in all defining characteristics, with
victims unable to move, subject to great anxiety, and aware of a feeling of suffocation
attributed to a weight on the chest.

A
comprehensive discussion of the phenomenon of the nightmare appeared in the
medical literature in the American Journal of Medical Science in 1834,
when Poe was 25 years old, written by a physician describing his person
experience with the entity:

"It makes its attack on the system in that stage of
sleep when the voluntary power is suspended, and the imagination is free from
those restraints imposed upon it in the state of wakefulness... through all
he feels spell-bound and unable to help or defend himself: he struggles with
all his power to be released... until at last... a sudden bound frees him
from his condition... as the first shades of sleep again descend upon him,
he very perceptibly feels the approach of the disease a second time... From
a lack of energy to change his position and shake off the predisposition now
formed, he remains quiet, perfectly conscious of the advancing symptoms which
are gradually stealing over him, until the power of voluntary motion is again
suspended... there is the sensation of a load upon the chest, and some fancy
it a monster attempting to suffocate them.In these attacks many faculties of the mind are active...
This is displayed in the exertion to move one part of the body and then another
alternately, knowing if we succeed relief will be obtained.A person... can see whatever comes
directly in front of him... is conscious of conversation when it takes place
in his presence; he has the sense of touch... he knows that he breathes but
with much difficulty; he has the power of natural voice, but not of speech, and
volition is perfect, but herorgans are not obedient to her mandates."(Fosgate)

In
1852, also writing in the American Journal of Medical Science, Rauch
said of a nightmare victim that

"He had no power to move or speak, and the only effort
he could make to arouse himself was that of loud and heavy breathing, and the
exertions he made to throw off the incubus increased it."

In
addition to these printed sources, it has been suggested (Mabbott in Mod Libr
intro) that Poe may have had an indebtedness to stories told to him by sailors
and Negroes.In American Negro
folklore there is cultural evidence of a high incidence of sleep paralysis,
with references to the experience "the witch is riding you."(Bell, JNMA).Poe would have had access to this folklore, and in fact
referred to his Negro friend, Armistead Gordon, as the most interesting man he
had ever talked to.

Did Poe experience Sleep
Paralysis?

It
is interesting to speculate on the possibility that Poe may have had first-hand
knowledge of the phenomena he describes.First of all, the entity of sleep paralysis is a common disorder.It has been detected by questionnaire
in 6-15% of medical students, usually without associated narcolepsy (Penn;
Goode; Everett).Several
epidemiologic studies (Bell; Fukuda) have detected isolated sleep paralysis in
40% of normal subjects.

Sleep
paralysis is also a cross-cultural phenomenon, having been reported with
similar frequency in American blacks (Bell) and Japanese college students
(Fukuda).In the most
comprehensive cultural study of the condition, Ness in 1978 examined the
"Old Hag" phenomenon among residents of a community if Newfoundland.Among 69 adults interviewed, 43
acknowledged experience with the Old Hag, described as occurring shortly after
falling asleep and associated with an inability to move or speak.During this paralysis the subjects
often felt as though a heavy weight were pressing on their chest, and
occasionally reported seeing the figure of an animal or human astride their
chest.The episode could be
terminated by someone simply bending the victim's toe or finger.The subjects considered the phenomenon
to be normal and unrelated to overall health except that it was occasionally
precipitated by strenuous work.Their explanation that it is caused by "stagnation of the
blood" echoes the explanation offered by Bond in 1753.

This
recognition that hard work might predispose to occurrences of sleep paralysis
has been reported by others, with the suggestion that both physical and
psychologic stress might be implicated in the genesis of the disorder,
presumably through an interruption of the normal sleep-wake cycle leading to
discoordinated sleep.It is clear
that Poe's daily life was such that psychologic stress was more the norm than
the exception.

Alcohol
is also well recognized as beingdisruptive to normal sleep architecture, decreasing latency to sleep,
but fragmenting sleep with frequent awakenings and REM sleep deprivation
(Lester).Poe shared with his
sister an apparently familial susceptibility to the effects of alcohol (Weiss,
Home Life).

It
is unfortunate that Poe never wrote of the content of his dreams or the nature
of his sleep; the bulk of his known correspondence consists of wearily
repetitive appeals for financial support from his minimally supportive father
and his long-suffering literary friends.It is known, however, that Poe once said that the most horrible thing he
could imagine as a boy was to feel an ice-cold hand laid upon his face in a
pitch-dark room when alone at night; or to awaken in semi-darkness and see an
evil face gazing close into his own; and that these fancies had so haunted him
that he would often keep his head under the bed-covering until nearly
suffocated" (Weiss, Home Life)(cf. Premature Burial: "Methought I was immersed in a cataleptic
trance of more than usual duration and profundity.Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead . . .
") (p. 156).This brief
anecdote has been interpreted as reflecting a "fear of the dark"
(Mabbott p. 953, Piethmann p. 149).In light of our current knowledge, it might, however, more appropriately
reflect a childhood experience with the nightmare phenomenon.

There
has been considerable disagreement regarding whether Poe wrote from life or
whether the poems and tales are simply cleverly crafted works designed to
appeal to the public.Of the craft
there is much evidence, exemplified by a detailed account by Poe of the
techniques he used for the structure and content of "The Raven."While such an account seems to dispel
the notion of the poetic muse inspiring the author to heights of artistic
creativity, there are also statements in Poe's work suggesting the importance
of writing from life.The most
elaborate is in "How to Write a Blackwoods Article," a parody of
literary journals of the time, in which he states that "Nothing so well
assists the fancy, as an experimental knowledge of the matter in
hand."Baudelaire, who
idolized Poe, was convinced that Poe wrote from life.

Finally
there is an intriguing discussion by Poe in his "Marginalia" which
describes a state between wakefulness and sleep.The "Marginalia," though purported by Poe to represent
a collection of his spontaneous marginal notes, was in fact a vehicle he used
to publish an assortment of opinions, literary critique, theories, and
prejudices which could not be published in other formats.In Marginalia #5 (written March, 1846),
Poe describes personal experiences which he labels "fancies" which
arise "at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking world
blend with those of the world of dreams."He claimed to be able to control the condition, experiencing
the fancies while preventing the progression to full sleep, and to be able to
force himself into wakefulness, transferring the fancies to conscious
memory.Finally he postulates that
these fancies in the moments between wakefulness and sleep may be common to all
mankind, but never previously recorded:"In a word - should I ever write a paper on this topic, the world
will be compelled to acknowledge that, at last, I have done an original
thing."

Sleep Paralysis in other
American Fiction

Other
descriptions of the phenomenon of sleep paralysis have been identified in
American literature published since Poe's death.The earliest, written by Thomas Hardy, appeared in his
Wessex Tales in 1896:

[need
to find and fill in]

In
Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" the protagonist, facing his
impending death, experiences sleep paralysis with visual and olfactory
hallucination:

"Death had come and rested its head on the foot of the
cot and he could smell its breath... It moved up closer to him still and now
he could not speak to it... it moved in on him so its weight was all upon
his chest, and while it crouched there... he could not move, or speak...
He could not speak to tell her to make it go away and it crouched now, heavier,
so he could not breathe.And then,
while they lifted the cot, suddenly it was all right and the weight went from
his chest."

It
is not known whether Hemingway experienced sleep paralysis.Schneck has found evidence, however,
that F. Scott Fitzgerald may have experienced the phenomenon shortly before his
death when his physician reported that Fitzgerald "had imagined himself to
be paralysed in his half-asleep state."Earlier, Fitzgerald had incorporated a description of sleep
paralysis in his novel The Beautiful and Damned:

"She was in a state half-way between sleeping and
waking, with neither condition predominant... and she was harassed by a
desire to rid herself of a weight pressing down upon her breast.She felt that if she could cry the
weight would be lifted.. And this weight was pressing on her, pressing on her... Some one had come to the door... an indescribable and subtly menacing
terror... Yet her tired heart, beating until it shook her breasts, made her
sure that there was still life in her... Blood rushed back into her limbs,
blood and life together.With a
start of energy she sat upright... " (Schneck, NY State J Med).

It must be clearly stated that
there is no firm evidence that Poe ever personally experienced sleep paralysis
or hypnagogic hallucinations.There are, however, in his works sufficient references to such
conditions to indicate familiarity with the phenomenon.He provides some of the earliest and most
graphic portrayals of these states, well before they were adequately defined in
the medial literature.

********************************************************

As I look at the manuscript now with older and wiser eyes, it's obvious that the final paragraph is a particularly weak ending, especially after straying away from Poe toward other authors. I think I should have excised the references to Hardy, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald and used them for a separate manuscript rather than tossing them in here.

As I think back to that era, I remember that at this point I ventured into library research about sleep paralysis in ancient and modern folklore (from witchcraft to alien abductions), created a lecture that I took "on the road" to a variety of conferences and annual meetings, then never got back to the Poe paper.

I know a number of readers of this blog have experience as copyeditors
and very likely as manuscript reviewers. Please feel free to criticize
freely in the Comments; perhaps with the resources of the internet at
hand I can someday finish fleshing this out into a proper publication.

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